Chapter 53 Nyte
Nyte
I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t care.
All I could do was stare at my vacant hands, in complete denial about how Astraea had drifted away from me like stardust. I knelt here alone when seconds ago she was cradled against me.
I had been wrong.
“Give her back to me,” I said through a breath, barely able to speak from the grief building in my throat and wracking a chill through my body. “Please.”
“Rainyte.” A feminine voice spoke my name.
It sounded familiar, echoing around me like an embrace I didn’t want. The delicate resonance hung in the air like a half-remembered dream, wavering and unsteady, as though it were a fragile thing that could vanish at any moment.
I didn’t care. She was not the one I wanted to turn around and see.
“Give her back!” I yelled, tightening my hands into fists and doubling over with the agony.
“My son.”
Those two words softened my hard breaths. I couldn’t understand why I was facing my mother. Was it truly her or the call of my reaching subconscious that brought the Goddess here?
Straightening, I didn’t even know where here was. There was no beginning and no end to the vast bright canvas around me.
My body felt fragmented, as if pieces of me had been scattered beyond reach.
I turned, and there she was—the flaming-haired fae, her figure hazy and ethereal, flickering with an otherworldly glow.
She looked like she was made of light and shadow, less a solid form than a lingering spirit, the ghost of the being she once was.
Her face held a quiet sadness, a centuries-old weight that spoke of choices and sacrifices I couldn’t begin to understand.
She’d once been bound to a sacred duty, but she had abandoned it long ago, forsaking the realm she’d sworn to balance and protect to chase a love on land that had turned to dust in her hands.
Again and again, the life on land had betrayed her, and yet here she stood, unwhole but unyielding, a relic of her own defiance.
I was one of those betrayals—a harm done to her. Both in the way I was a love taken from her and how I’d almost been the hand to end her once and for all when I’d traveled back to the land I came from during my death-like curse.
“Mother,” I said, still finding the term so unusual.
I had her eyes, of course. She was not just the origin of these bright golden irises but the shape of them too.
“My boy,” she whispered.
That claim was a punch through my silent chest. It was so … gentle. I’d never been claimed so gently, never known what being someone’s child felt like.
It did nothing for me now.
“Was it worth it?” I asked. “All you did to the realm I was born in?”
“Yes,” she answered without hesitation. “My kind have always believed there is a time for and order to everything. I always rebelled against that idea, but now I see. Now I see, Rainyte.”
“That your demise was inevitable.”
“Our lives connect to so much more than we could ever fathom. I am at peace with my end.”
“So even the villains find solace despite all the suffering they caused?”
“Not all. Your father will never be free of his torment.”
“Then why are you?”
“Because of you,” she said, stepping closer and reaching a hand to my face. “I might not have had the time with you I wanted, but I created you, and you lived for great things. You captured something I never could. A love so true it riles jealousy in gods. How could I not feel fulfilled by that?”
I didn’t know what to say. Her explanation was contrary to all I’d learned from my father. He had wanted the prize and glory, and he used me to get it for him.
“She’s gone,” I said miserably. “Astraea is gone from me.”
“She’s waiting,” Mother amended.
She reached for my hand, taking the vial of Dusk’s blood.
“I’ll take it from here. Your time isn’t finished in your realm. You have so much more to give and to feel.”
“Mother,” I breathed. This time the word came from the child she lost.
“I was wrong,” she said. “You are the dark she needs to find passion. For she has always been the light you have needed for guidance.”
She wrapped her arms around me. This embrace was unlike any other I’d felt before, and I didn’t really know how to return it.
Until she started to fade away; her form became more opaque.
I wouldn’t ever get this chance again, and so I hugged her back.
My mother, from the realm I was born in, who’d come to make sure I could stay in the realm I chose.
Then she was gone.
I was alone holding the true ending of Marvellas, and her new beginning.
The Spirit of Souls and Goddess of the Stars. Mortal mother of the gold-eyed children.…
Now she was the Primordial of Dusk across all realms and ages.